but a lot of people are wondering, we know that osama bin laden stopped his people from using cell phones. so what kind of communications -- what kifbd ch kind of chatt eter is intercept presumably from the nsa? >> we don't know if this is on the phone, is it e-mails or some other kind of communication we aren't thinking about. i'm told part of the seriousness of this is who is saying it. partly it is what they're saying but of course the government sees this sort of chest beating, bragging every day about imminent attacks. so the reason this is getting more attention is who's saying it. senior people in al qaeda in yemen. if you look at the map of the embassies that the u.s. is going to close for the rest of the week, that the state department put out yesterday, it's basically yemen and all around yemen. it's north africa, it's the middle east. so as you noted, they think the attack is either going to be in yemen or in those surrounding countries. why just those surrounding countries and not, say, somewhere in europe or somewhere else? one official i talked to today said it is an assessm